Writer Ray Bradbury signs autographs on April 7, 2001 in North Hollywood, Calif. The author passed away this week at the age of 91.

Ray Bradbury, widely considered one of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy, has died. He was 91 years old.

Bradbury was the author of such books as “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and “The Illustrated Man.” His wildly imaginative work blended surprisingly accurate forecasts on scientific and social trends with often poetic prose.

Critics who dismiss sci-fi and fantasy as kid’s stuff, or genre writing, need only turn to “The Martian Chronicles,” a futuristic tale filled with lyrical writing about man journeying to the Red Planet and finding his destiny.

Bradbury’s masterpiece “Fahrenheit 451″ offered up social commentary on book burning and censorship and is considered a classic.

“I found a typewriter in the back of the library at UCLA. It cost 10 cents for a half hour. I spent nine days at that typewriter and it cost me $9.80 to write Fahrenheit 451,” Bradbury said at an event in 2010 in which he was interviewed via Skype.

In the 1974 introduction to a paperback edition of his book “Dandelion Wine,” Bradbury once wrote that he used to try to “beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence.” But then he changed course.

“It was with great relief then, that in my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head,” Bradbury wrote.